


I Want to Unfold

by voleuse



Category: A Knight's Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-24
Updated: 2009-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want to Unfold

**Author's Note:**

> Post-movie. Title and summary adapted from Rainer Maria Rilke's _I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone_.

Will swung into smithy with a clank, the plates in his armor scraping against each other as he hooked his elbow around a post.

Kate looked over her shoulder, not worried about the noise as long as he approached the horse head-on. (Once, Wat had entered the smithy shouting and startled a horse from behind. The afternoon had not ended well.) She didn't smile, because a smile encouraged his cheerful insolence. "You might as well sing a song, if you're going to clatter like that."

He tugged at a lock of his hair, hummed until the light baritone resolved into words. She didn't catch them all, because she had a horse to shoe, and sometimes the squidge of metal and hoof obscured the song.

When she finished, the song was over, and Will watched her as she rolled her head back, stretching. "Ah, Will?"

"Yes?" He released the post, finally.

"Would you take this beauty back to the stables?" She gestured to the horse, which snorted as if on cue. "We can work on your armor later."

His grin flickered for a moment, then he bowed. "My lady."

"Scoundrel." She rolled her eyes and flicked the reins towards him. "Off with you!"

She waited until he was gone before she let herself watch him stroll away.

*

 

After so many months of playing servant to a false lord, Kate found it difficult to see Will's knighthood as anything but another costume. Despite the prince's regard and the people's accolade, it often proved a challenge for Will, as well.

Will didn't receive a new manor to go along with his new title, but a quick reshuffling of documents--so many things, Geoff declared, were true only in ink--gave him oversight over three well-maintained buildings and a stable. Will moved his father into a room with a proper hearth, and offered an immigrant family use of two rooms in exchange for a shared kitchen.

Kate found him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, after the last of the family had retired to their pallets in the next room. He had a worn sheepskin in front of him, and his fingers traced its edges in nervous taps. She crept up behind him, peered over his shoulder and saw coats of arms, trees formed out of letters she could not decipher.

She must have made a sound, because Will's shoulders tightened before he looked up at her. She smiled, shrugged an apology, and at his gesture, she seated herself beside him.

"I'm to attend court," he explained. "Apparently an ill-conceived nod might inspire war of some sort."

She looked at the dragons, the eagles, the lions. The swords and the hammers and the flails. "Hard to imagine."

He exhaled, then looked at her. "You're making fun of me."

"Of them." She tilted her head. "I suppose that's you, as well."

"Unkind, Kate." He shifted on the bench, and his arm pressed against hers. "You realize this might mean the last of me?"

"Aye." She gauged his sincerity and found none at all. "We'll miss you dearly, Will."

"We?" he asked. He dipped his head.

"Geoff already calls your name in the night." Will's breath was warm against her cheek. "Will! Will!" She let the name linger on her tongue.

He chuckled. "And how, exactly, do you know what Geoff moans at night?"

"I wouldn't dare tell you," she teased, then raised her face for a kiss.


End file.
